Study of Greek taken up in Northern Europe.
The study of Greek, at first almost confined to Florence, gradually spread over the whole of the peninsula and finally passed north of the Alps into Germany, where it was taken up with great earnestness. Opposed by the ignorant monks everywhere, and by others who feared that the authority and repute of Latin authors would be terminated, it gradually won its way. In 1458 a Greek professor was appointed in Paris, and one in Rome. Similar professorships were established in most of the Italian universities, following in this respect the example of Florence. In the reign of Henry the Seventh, Oxford consented to receive Grocyn and Linacre as teachers of Greek.[552]
As the zeal for a knowledge of Greek died out in Italy it took deeper root in Germany. Chrysoloras and George of Trebizond were followed by a succession of students, until we meet with the names of Germans and Dutchmen who had gone to Italy to make themselves acquainted with the recovered language and literature. Among them that of Erasmus holds the foremost place.
The movement known as ‘The Revival of Learning’ was accomplished before the end of the fifteenth century, and all investigators are agreed that it had been very largely contributed to by Greek exiles during the half-century preceding and following the Moslem conquest.
Its paganisation of Christianity proved temporary. But the critical examination of the text of the Greek New Testament and of the Greek Fathers had more durable results. It called attention to the contents of a book which had hitherto been taken as outside controversy. When the study of Greek passed north of the Alps, the examination of the sacred writings was no longer in the hands of dilettanti who looked upon the text with the contempt of scholars disposed to accept paganism as the complement of a higher form of civilisation, and who had no patience with what they regarded as trivialities, but in those of religious and earnest German students, with results, in Erasmus, Luther, Melanchthon, Calvin, and others, the end of which is not yet visible.
MSS. destroyed or carried away.
The manuscripts which were taken to Italy were the seed destined to yield a rich literary harvest, and their removal from Constantinople was an advantage. It is otherwise with the manuscripts which perished. In 1204 the rude Venetians and Crusaders destroyed great numbers for the sake of their covers.[553] A manuscript which had cost many months of labour, which was written and perhaps illuminated with great skill, was worthy of a costly covering. Some of the bindings were enriched with jewels or with silver or gold clasps and other decorations. The covers rather than the interior were the objects then coveted. There is reason to believe that in the two subsequent centuries thousands of manuscripts disappeared, many possibly stolen or sold for their bindings. But as learning in Constantinople made little progress after the Latin occupation, it is probably to the ignorance of the monks that the disappearance of many of them ought to be attributed. Yet all the evidence which exists shows that an enormous number of manuscripts remained in Constantinople until 1453. We have seen that Ducas declares that during the days following the sack of the city ten volumes on theology and other studies, including Aristotle and Plato, were sold for a small silver coin, and that an incredible number of manuscripts of the Gospels after they had been stripped of their gold and silver bindings were either sold or given away.[554] Critobulus adds that while a very great number of books were burnt or ignominiously trampled to pieces, the larger number were sold at ridiculous sums, not for the sake of their price, but in contemptuous wantonness.[555] I am unaware what authority Hody has for stating[556] that after the capture of the city a hundred and twenty thousand books were destroyed, but that the destruction was great cannot reasonably be doubted.[557]
After the conquest the treasures guarded by the Greek monks rapidly began to disappear, and especially from the capital. The octagonal libraries, one of which formed usually an adjunct to every church, were taken from the Christians by the victorious Turk and applied to other uses,[558] and the contents were for the most part dispersed or destroyed. Successive travellers for two centuries found rich gleanings among them, and the number of manuscripts taken or sent away suggests that the original stores in Constantinople had been enormous. Janus Lascaris returned to Italy with two hundred books, eighty of which were as yet unknown in the libraries of Europe. Even as late as the time of Busbeck, who was ambassador of the Holy Roman Emperor to Suliman in 1555, he was able to conclude the announcement of his return home by saying: ‘I have whole wagon-loads, if not ship-loads, of Greek manuscripts, and about two hundred and forty books which I sent by sea to Venice. I intend them for Caesar’s library. I rummaged every corner to provide such kind of merchandise as my final gleaning.’[559]
While it is beyond doubt that the dispersion of students from Constantinople aided the intellectual movement in Western Europe by introducing new ideals of poetry, of history, and of philosophy, as well as by modifying the conceptions of classical art and architecture,[560] there is no ground for the belief that, if the city had not been captured, Greek influence would not have made itself felt in the Renaissance. The dispersion hastened the development of a movement which had already begun, awakened a spirit of inquiry, and conducted scholars into new fields of thought earlier than they would have arrived if not thus aided. In this sense, and to this extent, it may be claimed as a beneficial result of the capture of Constantinople.